Saturday, March 22, 2014

"A Woman's Role" by Carol Moessinger is a
heartfelt memoir of a place, a people, and a time too little treated in the
American literary canon, or in films, academia, or the wider popular culture.
"A Woman's Role" introduces the reader to "Bohunk" immigrants
and their descendants working Pennsylvania's coal mines in the 1950s. These
people were Polish, Hungarian, Slovak, Lithuanian, and other peasants from
Eastern Europe. I want every Polish American to buy and read this book, but I
also want those curious about a slice of America that they haven't learned
about from school, films or other novels to read "A Woman's Role."

"A Woman's Role" follows the life of young
Celina Pasniewska. Celina is the granddaughter of a Polish peasant immigrant
woman. Her father and her brother are coal miners. Her mother is a workhorse
who cooks on a coal stove, cans produce and keeps chickens and pigs.

Celina dreams of a life beyond her coal town. Her dreams have
no easy or obvious route to realization. Her parents insist that she work at
home as well as at her place of paid employment, Duxbury's Department store. Tomas,
Celina's father, orders her about like a maid: make coffee; bring me ham. Her
mother relies on her to be her helper. Her mother insists that Celina must not
move away. Local men find Celina attractive, and if she marries them, she will
never leave her hometown.

Celina is a Bohunk, and, as such, she is not a
"Johnny Bull," someone descended from the British Isles. Some look
down on her for that. Too, Celina is a woman in the 1950s, when America was
retiring Rosie the Riveter and women were expected to be domestic goddesses. Celina
must navigate her desire for love and romance, her thirst for an intellectual
life, her craving to be free and independent, her traditional Polish Catholic
immigrant family and their demands, and her heartache over a lost love.
Celina's boyfriend died while serving in the US military in Korea.

"A Woman's Role"'s cover calls the book "a
1950s romance." I think some will read it, and enjoy it, that way. I see
the book differently, though. To me it read like a memoir of a small town
Polish girl. Romance is part of the book, but it isn't the largest part. And
men will enjoy this book every bit as much as women. Celina is the main
character, but her father is a believable coal mining man. His struggle for
dignity and satisfaction in life is as important as Celina's.

"A Woman's Role" has the episodic structure of
a memoir. Events are strung out like beads; each event teaches the reader
something about what life was like for an ambitious Polish American woman in
the 1950s. Celina has that conversation with her mother about her hopes for the
future versus her mother's hopes – they are irreconcilable, and one woman's
hopes must give way so that the other's may be realized. Will it be the
younger, or the older? Celina experiences workplace harassment, and workplace
diminishment because she is a woman, and because she is a Bohunk. There is a
Polish wedding – the community's greatest joy; there is a mine accident – its greatest
dread.

"A Woman's Role" is written in a straightforward,
highly accessible style. I would recommend this book not only to adults, but
also to young adult readers. It does not exercise high literary ambitions. This
is a book that wants to connect with the reader and make its message plain on a
first read.

Moessinger's great gift is vivid description, for example
this passage, "The faint scent of incense and milted bees wax candles
clung to the church's cool, dimply lit sanctuary. The cavernous, echoing
sacredness of the place encouraged the parishioners to speak in hushed whispers.
Celina genuflected and slid into the pew beside her parents as dappled beams of
colored light streamed through the figures of angels and saints frozen in the stained
glass."

The ethnographic details of the book made certain scenes
most memorable to me. Moessinger brings to life a 1950s era Bohunk kitchen.
There is the coal stove, the damper, the process of taking a season's harvest
of apples and reducing them to apple sauce. Three generations of Polish women,
and a family friend, sit around the table peeling and coring apples. The son
takes the cores and peels out to the family pig.

Moessinger's characters refer to Americans whose
ancestors came from the British Isles – their coal town's more privileged
citizens – as "John Bulls." My father was a Polish American coal
miner when he was a child. He didn't mine for long – he hated it. Children like
my dad were used because mine bosses want to exploit the shortest tunnels
possible, tunnels into which only children could fit. My father called
Americans of British descent "Johnny Bulls."

There is a scene that touched me especially deeply. Celina's
mother orders and begs her daughter not to move away from their coal town. She
talks about the loneliness of having grown up with no grandparents, no aunts
nor uncles. Her parents had left Poland, alone, and started new lives in
America. Her father had lost one brother who, upon emigrating from Poland with
his brother, went to South America. That brother was never heard from again. This
passage touched me deeply, as I, too, grew up without real grandparents. My
surviving grandparents never learned English, and I had little contact with
them. I also had Old Country relatives I heard tales about, but never met.

For me this book, given its episodic structure, lacked a
strong plot drive. I'm not sure the novel is Moessinger's strongest genre.
Given her obvious ethnography knowledge, and her urge to educate – there are
brief but strongly didactic passages – I think Moessinger's next literary
project should be a straightforward ethnography.

Friday, March 21, 2014

"The Grand Budapest Hotel" is remarkable; it's a recent American film that salutes Mitteleuropa. Surprisingly, there are no Bieganskis at this hotel. There are no stereotypically evil Eastern European characters. Review below.

My Aunt Tetka lived most of her 101 years in Bayonne, New
Jersey but she never learned to speak English well at all. Who needed The New
York Times, Kennedy's inauguration speech, or William
Shakespeare? Aunt Tetka could sing all one hundred verses of Slovak folksongs.

Visiting Aunt Tetka was a trip to another world, a world
she took with her when she (finally!) died. There were many curtains. The air
was inside her home was as thick as soup. It smelled sweet, like Uncle
Strecko's pipe smoke, and pungent, of cabbage, onions, and ham. There were sepia
photographs of grim faced men with serious mustaches and women in embroidered babushkas,
oil paintings of peasant huts and high mountains, figurines of goose girls,
brass ornaments incised with pagan sun symbols and a graphic crucified Christ. Aunt
Tetka consumed only pastries, sprinkled with powdered sugar, served on handmade
doilies. Five minutes into Wes Anderson 2014 film "The Grand Budapest
Hotel," I was weeping. Anderson took me back to Aunt Tetka.

Mitteleuropa means "Central Europe" in German.
Mitteleuropa has had many meanings, some of them frightening, geopolitical, and
military. The friendlier Mitteleuropa references musics, languages, cuisines,
colors and attitudes of Central Europe, an area stretching roughly from Germany
to Ukraine, from the Baltics to the Balkans, a region sharing slivovice, zither
and cimbalom, Gypsies, irony, pastry, sentiment, Catholicism, Judaism
Orthodoxy, empire and cataclysm. Given recent news events, Mitteleuropa is much
in the news: today we speak again of Cossacks, Crimea, and empire.

There aren't many American films that encapsulate the
feel of Mitteleuropa. "The Third Man" comes to mind, with its famous
zither score. There's the original Bela Lugosi "Dracula" and
"Fiddler on the Roof." Most of these films emphasize the dark side of
the region, and that's too bad. Mitteleuropa has a rich tradition of joy and
humor. It's remarkable that Anderson, an all-American filmmaker produced
"The Grand Budapest Hotel."

When watching this film, I really wondered how much of it
the audience would understand. GBH so tenderly reflects the peculiar history
and experience of Mitteleuropa. For example, the movie is told as a
reminiscence by a writer remembering an encounter from his youth with another
person who retells the life story of yet another person. Why this "as told
to as told to" feature? Why not just present the narrative directly?

The "as told to as told to" feature adds to the
feeling of a lost world, of the antique, of a word-of-mouth story that is not
reflected accurately in official histories. If you read the official histories
of Mitteleuropa in the 20th century, you read of battles and
massacres. If you know the people from Mitteleuropa, you encounter warmth and
humanity and fate and humor and hair's breadth escapes and moments of
generosity and grace that never made it into official histories. If you hadn't
gone to that one déclassé health spa in the Zubrowkian Alps, you never would
have met that one person, and never learned the story of Monsieur Gustav, and
the tiny nation of Zubrowka would always be a mystery to you.

The opening scenes, in rapid succession, show the Grand
Budapest Hotel under communism, and then in its glory days, under something
like the Hapsburg Empire. These very brief juxtapositions are brilliant. They
really capture what those of us who traveled to Mitteleuropa saw under the
Soviet system, even the creepy green paint.

Monsieur Gustav is a concierge and gigolo. While training
a new lobby boy, Zero, Gustav becomes entangled in a family scandal, a heist, and
a prison break. There is a war in the background. For all its silliness, the
movie brings M Gustav to life. Ralph Fiennes MUST receive an Academy Award
nomination, and he really ought to win. He plays his part completely straight.
His deadpan delivery of funny lines and his commitment to M Gustav brings this
parody character in a wacky film to complete life. You love Gustav. You admire
him. He moves you. You care about his fate.

Tony Revolori is very good as Zero Mustafa, Gustav's protégée.
His relationship with Gustav is adorable.

The movie moves at a surprisingly brisk pace. The film
itself may be looking back with nostalgia, but it is an action film. There is a
genuinely exciting chase scene on skis.

GBH doesn't attempt to honor the horrors that took place
in Mitteleuropa in the 20th century. The Holocaust is just one of
these horrors; there was also the Holodomor, the mass migration of starving
peasants to the US, battle casualties, and too many other atrocities to
mention. There are scenes where characters speak of being displaced and on the
run, of families massacred. The viewer knows what Anderson is referencing. At one
point the GBH is taken over by evil forces whose insignia, a design close to a
swastika, appears on banners draped all over the hotel, in the same way that a swastika
was draped over the von Trapp home in "Sound of Music."

Anderson's answer to this evil is M. Gustav: be kind, be
a friend, and be quietly clever. Make connections with other humans. Do favors,
and rely on favors. This focus on the ordinary gestures of good hearted people
in the face of enormous evil is deeply touching.

I wish there had been more women in this film. Saoirse Ronan
is the one female part of note, and she speaks in an Irish accent as sharp as a
blade that totally took me out of the film. Her screen presence is cold and not
fitting. I wish there had been more peasants, and more outside scenes.
Mitteleuropa was built on peasantry and GBH needed at least one buxom earth goddess
binding sheaves of wheat or milking a cow.

There's so much more to say about this film – Alexandre
Desplat's fabulous score, the hints of German expressionism, the all-star cast,
the use of painted backdrops, the funicular – but there's time for that.
"Grand Budapest Hotel" is a film that people are going to be talking
about for a long time.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Bieganski can appear in a PBS documentary that never so
much as mentions Poles.

"Bugging Hitler's Soldiers" is an excellent PBS
documentary that introduces the viewer to a recently disclosed British program.

During World War II, the Brits imprisoned Nazi generals
and soldiers. Britain, in one of the first acts of surveillance of this kind,
bugged the soldiers and generals. Their conversations were recorded and
transcribed. These conversations reveal how ordinary Germans signed on to, and
committed, horrific atrocities, including the mass murder of Jews and other
victims of the Nazis.

Their testimony is grotesque. One soldier brags about
raping Russian women. Another confesses to sleeping with Jewish women before
they are gunned down and buried in mass graves.

One soldier had been a prisoner in Buchenwald. He talks
about uses made of the tanned human skin of concentration camp inmates.

One of the Nazi soldiers is named Horst Minnieur. The
narrator pronounces his name as "horse manure." Never was there a
better name for a Nazi.

Again, this documentary is excellent. It never mentions
Poles and mentions Poland only once in passing. How does this documentary play
into the Bieganski stereotype?

The Brits are the sole heroes fighting the Nazis. And the
Brits are so very heroic.

The documentary mentions the, in the words of Helen Fry
Sync, "very British, very clever" espionage. The program never
mentions World War II's greatest espionage coup, the Polish
work on Enigma. The documentary lauds "very British very clever"
espionage revealing the existence of the Peenemunde V-1 and V-2 rockets, while
never mentioning the Polish
contribution to that aspect of the war. The documentary praises the Brits
for figuring out that the Holocaust was actually taking place. The documentary
never mentions the work of Polish Home Army soldiers like Jan Karski and Witold
Pilecki in uncovering the horrors of the Holocaust and sending that news
westward.

So, you have these really bad guys, Nazis, and you have
these sole, heroic people fighting against them. The Brits.

But wait, there's more.

Yes, the Nazis are saying horrifying things. This
documentary, repeating the transcribed words of German soldiers, reveals that
ordinary Germans DID know what was going on and DID participate in atrocities.

Given how much these Germans are like us – modern, white,
well-educated, Western – this information might be impossible to assimilate.

The documentary makes it all go down much easier by
foregrounding, not evil Nazis, not doomed Jews, not the heroic transcribers,
many of them German Jews, not even British people. No.

The heroes in the foreground are all wearing German army
uniforms. They are two German generals who said critical things about Hitler.
One is General Willheim Ritter von Thoma. The other is General Paul von
Felbert.

Von Thoma dominates the screen throughout this
documentary. The transcript, at the PBS website, reveals that von Thoma's name
is mentioned FIFTY times. In a fifty minute documentary about Nazi horrors, and
about the willingness, even the eagerness and gusto, that ordinary Germans
exercised when participating in atrocities against Russians and Jews, the name
of a HEROIC German general in Hitler's army is mentioned fifty times, and that
handsome, fully uniformed general dominates the screen.

In that narrative vacuum, Bieganski provides an excellent
villain.

The end of the documentary is hideous. The documentary
states, "Not one of Trent Park’s prisoners was ever convicted of a single
war crime on the basis of what they said while imprisoned." The excuse the
Brits give for this miscarriage of justice? They wanted to preserve their
espionage secrets.

Nonsense. They could have avoided admitting that they'd
gathered this info via microphones. They could have said they merely
eavesdropped at keyholes. They could have interrogated the generals and told
them that their cellmates had turned on them and gotten fresh testimony. But
the heroic, clever, wonderful Brits let these animals go.

Oh, one more thing. These Nazi soldiers talked a lot about victimizing Poles. For example, one talked about the satisfaction he received, when bombing Poland, in targeting mothers pushing baby carriages. The victimization of Poles doesn't make it into this PBS episode. You can read more about it here.

This morning Terese Pencak Schwartz informed me of a new documentary film that Terese learned about through an email from Alexa Brinkschulte of Capital Ship Marketing.

The new documentary is entitled "Forget Us Not." The filmmaker is Heather Connell. The documentary addresses the five million non-Jews who were murdered by the Nazis. I watched the film's trailer on youtube and visited the film's website. I saw that interviewed survivors included a Roma or Gypsy, a Pole, and a physically handicapped Jehovah's Witness. The trailer I saw on youtube impressed me positively. I have not seen the full film so I cannot comment on it.

You can visit the webpage for "Forget Us Not" here. The "Forget Us Not" facebook page is here.

Therese Pencak Schwartz's "Forgotten Holocaust" page is here. Her book is available at Amazon here.

This stereotype is strengthened by a laser focus on
anti-Semitic acts committed by Poles.

In fact anti-Semitism is an international problem. It
must be addressed internationally.

The disturbing and disgusting excerpts from the below-quoted
New York Times article show that anti-Semitism is a problem in the modern
United States.

Anti-Semitism is evil and must be condemned wherever it
appears.

Identifying Poles – or, lately, Ukrainians – as essential anti-Semites muddies this
fight, rather than contributing to the success of the fight against
anti-Semitism.

Swastikas, Slurs and Torment in Town's Schools

By Benjamin Weiser

November 7, 2013

The swastikas, the students recalled, seemed to be
everywhere: on walls, desks, lockers, textbooks, computer screens, a playground
slide — even on a student's face.

A picture of President Obama, with a swastika drawn on
his forehead, remained on the wall of an eighth-grade social studies classroom
for about a month after a student informed her teacher, the student said.

For some Jewish students in the Pine Bush Central School
District in New York State, attending public school has been nothing short of a
nightmare. They tell of hearing anti-Semitic epithets and nicknames, and
horrific jokes about the Holocaust.

They have reported being pelted with coins, told to
retrieve money thrown into garbage receptacles, shoved and even beaten. They
say that on school buses in this rural part of the state, located about 90
minutes north of New York City and once home to a local Ku Klux Klan chapter
president, students have chanted "white power" and made Nazi salutes
with their arms.

The proliferation and cumulative effect of the slurs,
drawings and bullying led three Jewish families last year to sue the district
and its administrators in federal court; they seek damages and an end to what
they call pervasive anti-Semitism and indifference by school officials.

The district — centered in Pine Bush, west of Newburgh,
and serving 5,600 children from Orange, Sullivan and Ulster Counties — is
vigorously contesting the suit. But a review of sworn depositions of current
and former school officials shows that some have acknowledged there had been a
problem, although they denied it was widespread and said they had responded
appropriately with discipline and other measures.

"There are anti-Semitic incidents that have occurred
that we need to address," John Boyle, Crispell Middle School's principal,
said in a deposition in April.

In 2011, when one parent complained about continued
harassment of her daughter and another Jewish girl, Pine Bush's superintendent
from 2008 to 2013, Philip G. Steinberg, wrote in an email, "I have said I
will meet with your daughters and I will, but your expectations for changing
inbred prejudice may be a bit unrealistic."

Mr. Steinberg, who, along with two other administrators
named as defendants, is Jewish, described the lawsuit in recent interviews as a
"money grab." He contended that the plaintiffs had "embellished"
some allegations…

Not long afterward, the mother said, one of the boys
called T.E. "Jew" on the bus and made an offensive gesture toward her
and her daughter.

Sherri E. withdrew her daughter from Crispell Middle
School last year, and is now educating her at home….The swastikas, drawn or
carved onto school property, or even constructed by students out of pipe
cleaners, caused much of the anxiety. Sometimes they were accompanied by
messages like "Die Jew," the children testified.

"I actually started to hate myself for being Jewish,"
D.C., a Pine Bush High School graduate who now attends college, said in an
interview. He recalled that around the time of the Jewish holidays, teachers
would ask if there were Jewish students in the class. "I learned very,
very quickly not to raise my hand," he said…

His sister, O.C., now 15, testified about a more direct
message from a sixth grader who formed his hand into the shape of a gun and "said
he was killing Jews."

In seventh grade, O.C. said, she saw a girl holding her
hands up to hide a swastika on her face. The girl explained that a student had
restrained her while another drew the insignia; the school said it had
disciplined the two students.

…"How do you get a Jewish girl's number? Lift up her
sleeve," went one. D.C. remembered a student telling him that his
ancestors had died in the Holocaust. The student then blew on his flattened
hand, and said, "You are just ashes."…

At that point, a pickup truck pulled up nearby, and a man
emerged. The man, John Barker, 42, a mechanic, cautioned that "everybody
watches out for everybody." When asked about the presence of Jewish
families, he blurted out, "We don't want them in our town."

"They can't drive, for number one — and they already
have Sullivan County. Who really wants them here? They don't belong here."…

A boy on the bus ride home asked if he was Jewish, and
when D.R. answered yes, a group of students began taunting him with slurs, he
testified. One boy then repeatedly punched him in the stomach "until I was
ready to throw up," D.R. said in his account.…

"I was lied to, to my face, repeatedly, by the
schools," Jerrold R. recalled in an interview. The assurances, he said, "kept
us from doing something that would have protected our kids, taking a more
aggressive stance."…

In a September court hearing in White Plains, the
district's lawyer, Ms. Wong-Pan, told Judge Kenneth M. Karas that Pine Bush
officials did not condone anti-Semitism. She accused the plaintiffs of
distorting the facts.

"I mean, the way they describe it, it sounds like it's
the Third Reich in those schools," she said…

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

I just finished reading Bieganski: The Brute Polack
Stereotype, Its Role in Polish- Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture
by Dr. Danusha Goska. The heart-wrenching, complex realities and stories
captured my mind and heart. Goska's brave and honest writing pulled me in. The
information revealed and the topics discussed about Poles and Jews are what
most people, in polite conversation, do not want to talk about or bring up. "Don't
go there. It is too touchy." Goska bravely goes there and brings to the
forefront a history of the Polish people and Polish Jews that needs to be
openly discussed and understood.

Stereotypes have defined these cultures in a negative
light for far too long. It is time to understand and look at our assumptions
and biases. I give Goska a standing ovation for collecting all this harrowing,
at times horrific, yet important, information for her book. Goska's agenda is
not to side with Poles or Jews. Her agenda is to uncover, reveal and discuss an
elephant in the room: the misrepresentation and stereotyping of Poles in
contemporary culture by some people and organizations. She has introduced me to
a whole wide world. Goska writes:

"Stereotyping occurs when insupportable conclusions
are drawn from demonstrable facts. These conclusions come from a limited
perspective. To the Polish peasant who saw Jews only as tavern keepers or
estate managers who lured Poles into excessive drink and then pressured ruined,
drunken peasants to pay very high tavern tabs, or pressured desperate serfs to
work to fill grain quotas, the Jew is a greedy drug pushing slave driver, no
more, no less.

To the Jew whose most memorable encounter with a Polish
peasant was the Pole who drank to excess and toiled like a mule in the fields,
the Pole is a bestial drunk. The Pole did not factor into his assessment the
tender Jewish parent, or the intimidated Jew pressured by the Polish magnate to
wring the peasants for all they were worth. The Jews did not see the
exuberance, generosity and creativity that the peasant displayed with his
peers."

With all stereotyping we choose to see only one side of a
story. The simplification of Jewish or Polish culture perpetuates misunderstandings,
bigotry and hatred. When you bring into the mix horrific world events like the
rise of the Nazis, the Holocaust and the power play Poland experienced at the
hands of Russia and the Soviet Union, the stereotypes are compounded by the
awfulness and the ugliness of these times and events.

I had not heard of this book and I didn't really think
about Polish and/or Jewish stereotypes much before the spring of 2011. This all
changed when I went on a quest to Poland to meet my relatives and to study art
history and ethnography through a summer school program at Jagiellonian
University in Krakow. I met Dr. Goska on this trip and that is how I learned
about Bieganski.

A couple months before I embarked on my trip, I attended
a Georgian singing workshop, in a New England town near where I live. I spoke
with a man about my plans to travel. When I said I was going to spend a little
over a month in Poland, a look of astonishment appeared on his face, followed
by a question. "Why would you want to go to Poland?" he scoffed.

I was taken aback by the suspicious energy that was
driving this inquiry. An awkward pause in our conversation followed. He then
said, "The people of Poland are anti-semitic. My nephew was there this
past year and he was horrified by what he saw and what he experienced. Poles
hate Jews."

His demeanor and blanket definition of a whole race of
people alarmed me. Aside from the "dumb-Polack" jokes I heard growing
up, this was the first serious run in I've had with the stereotyping of Polish
people. This "Bieganski" moment shook me awake. Interactions like
this one, documented and undocumented, is why Bieganski is such an important
book. Bieganski has been an instrumental book in helping me to understand
Polish / Jewish relations.

Goska unveils how Poles are stereotyped in popular media
by writing extensively of the portrayal of Poles in American cinema and in the
press. She devotes early chapters in Bieganski to these fascinating topics. You
have to read these chapters to believe it!

Chapter 6: The Peasant and Middleman Minority Theory was
particularly eye-opening to read. I found this chapter helpful for
understanding the core issues explaining the rise of Polish / Jewish
stereotypes. Jews were the middleman minority in Poland for hundreds of years.

"Middleman minority populations are concentrated in
urban, skilled and mercantile professions. Their Socioeconomic status falls
between elites and peasants. To some extent, they operate under their own code,
and are not limited by the surrounding culture's taboos that impede business
progress for those rooted in their communities (Bonacich 584). Middleman
minorities have at least a ritual tie to another territory, and if only in a
mythic sense, experience themselves as 'sojourners.' The sojourner mindset
encourages the choice for easily liquidated professions and the amassing of
capital, while at the same time it erects barriers to the forming of bonds with
members of what Bonacich calls the 'host' society. Bonds are formed with other
members of the middleman group, even those geographically distant (585-86;
593)."

Chapter 6 provides a theory and one possible explanation
of why relationships between Poles and Jews have not always been smooth, easy
or easily understood.

Poles and Poland, as well as the Jews, were victims of
the Nazis. Chapter 7 in Bieganski, The Necessity of Bieganski: A Shamed and
Horrified World Seeks a Scapegoat, begins to explain the question that I have
in all of this. Why are Poles sometimes blamed by Jews and others for the Holocaust?
Why are Poles sometimes blamed for allowing the Holocaust to happen? It was
Nazi Germany who brought all of this about. Nazi Germany caused the suffering
and deaths of millions of Jews AND Polish people and others. The problem is as
Goska writes here:

"If one does not single out Poles, whom can one
blame? The answer is too terrifying to attract an audience. Given the worlds
response to the Holocaust, and to events since, like the auto-genocide in
Cambodia, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski wrote:

'Humanity has failed and continues to fail ... the only
people who did not fail and who completely confirmed their humanity were those
who responded to this test by making the ultimate choice and who died helping
their neighbors. No one living can say that of himself. No on living can -
whether for political or polemical reasons - demand it of others.'"

I've read comments about Bieganski, in book reviews and
on the Bieganski blog, where others sometimes want to label Goska as an
anti-semite and/or anti-Polish. Both criticisms are flawed and narrow.
Bieganski is such an important book because Dr. Goska brings to light stories
of Jews and Poles that help air out the the stink that builds up and
perpetuates stereotypes.

It is time to move beyond the past, towards a more understanding,
kind-hearted, compassionate view of the Polish-Jewish history. As long as there
is an US and a THEM, there will be stereotypes. Our human selves are flawed yet
the religions which represent the Jews and the Poles, Judaism and Christianity,
teach kindness, compassion and understanding. Unfortunately, until we can rise
higher than our human hurts and gain a level of compassion and forgiveness,
there will be negative stereotypes.

Goska writes:

"It is time for people of good will to stop scapegoating,
to stop insisting that one ethnic group is uniquely prone to stereotypical
thinking. It is time for people of good will to join together to a way to
address all stereotypical thinking, including that engaged in by stereotyped
people themselves."

One of the many things I take away from this necessary
book is to tread lightly and question assumptions: personal assumptions and
assumptions made by others including the media, academia, and world and
religious leaders. Bieganski deserves to be widely read and discussed ,
especially by Polish-Americans, Poles and Jews. It deserves to be included in
academic courses about Jewish and Polish relations. The Bieganski issue is not
black and white.

Goska does a fair and thorough job revealing the shades
of gray found in the stories she shares and tells. Goska does not paint the
picture that all Poles are good and all Jews are bad, nor vice versa. Instead
she walks a fine line in her writing revealing the hurtful stories, both true
and untrue, that are perpetuated about these two intertwined cultures and
ethnicities.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

On Sunday, March 9, 2014, Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, Chief Rabbi of Ukraine -- but a proud Brooklyn boy by birth -- appeared on the WABC talk radio program "Religion on the Line." Rabbi Bleich stated clearly that "What is good for Ukraine is good for the Jews; what is bad for Ukraine is bad for the Jews."Rabbi Bleich took a strong stand against the Bieganski-style stereotyping that has been going on on WABC of late, as mentioned in previous blog posts. For example last week on this program, Rabbi Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center depicted Ukrainians as typical Bieganskis.Alas, during this program, Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, host of the show, made a joke. "Hey! I have good news! I've been made Chief Rabbi! But I have bad news. I have been made Chief Rabbi in Ukraine!"Rabbi Bleich would have none of this. He said without qualification, "I love Ukraine." Rabbi Bleich acknowledges that there have been anti-Semitic incidents in Ukraine during the current unrest. He said that it is not yet known who committed these acts, and whether or not they are provocations by the state. Rabbi Bleich also struggled to introduce historical context into the conversation. He mentioned how oppressive powers, from the Czars to Putin, exploited minorities like the Jews to divide and conquer, to stir up hatred of one oppressed minority group against the other. We applaud Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich and we wish him, Ukraine's Jews, and Ukraine all the best at this anxious time. Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich asked listeners to consider donating to a fund for protection of Jews and others in Ukraine. The charity is named Kiev Relief dot org and we encourage concerned parties to donate here.You can read more about Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich here.

Saturday, March 8, 2014

As previous posts have shown, WABC, a NY radio station, has featured rhetoric by Rabbi Cooper and Ron Kuby and others characterizing Ukrainians as essential pogromists. Christiane Amanpour challenged Prof. Stephen Cohen on this on CNN. TIME magazine has published an article entitled "Putin Says Ukraine's Revolutionaries are Anti-Semites. Is He Right?" You can read that article here.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Louise Steinman's "The Crooked Mirror: A Memoir of
Polish-Jewish Reconciliation" has been praised as "appealing to wide
audiences," and "unblinking, scrupulous and enduring." Richard
Rodriguez called "Crooked Mirror" "the most extraordinary travel
book I have ever read" about a "nightmare" country, "dark,
haunted" Poland, into which "miracle" working Steinman breaks
"shattering light."

In fact "The Crooked
Mirror" is the self-indulgent, impressionistic travel diary of a New Age,
dilettante Holocaust tourist. The book consists of brief, unorganized anecdotes.
In one, a Lakota healer burns sweet grass and waves an eagle feather over
Auschwitz visitors. In another, an impoverished Polish peasant listens to Radio
Maryja. These anecdotes are meant to give us enough ammo to conclude who our
protagonists and antagonists are. With the sketchiest of information, we
presume to gain the authority to elevate the healer as a good guy, and condemn
the old woman.

"Crooked Mirror"'s literary style
is basic, its discipline absent, its arrogance depressing. Steinman's tic is
putting two parts of speech at the end of sentences and separating them with a
comma. The Jews she knew hated Poland more than Germany, "a fact I never
questioned as odd, misplaced." Or, "why would you expect your
neighbors to shoot you, take your house?" Or "she begged her father,
her aunts." Or "he questioned her urgently, gently." Or "We
baffled him with our reactions, our decisions." Or "my overcoat was
forgiving, pliant." Steinman's tic is distracting, annoying. Where is the
editor, the proofreader?

Steinman visits Treblinka and
tries to say something of note about that piece of earthly Hell, but Treblinka
receives fewer words than tedious descriptions of the dreams of Steinman's
travel companion, Cheryl Holtzman.

During a layover in
Paris, Steinman visits La Bibliotheque Polonaise – the Polish library. In this
chapter she says a few things about Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish national poet,
and then a bit about the gingko trees in Krakow, Polish words for trees, and how
fashionably dressed and made-up the library's chief curator is. At the end of
this chapter I had to ask myself, "Why did I just read that?"

Steinman
asks rhetorical questions, for example, "Why does one person reject"
stereotypes, and why does another accept them? She responds to her own
rhetorical question: "Breathe in why. Breathe out why. So simple. So
difficult." The chapter, and the book's attempt to plumb the serious
questions it raises, end right there.

Steinman purports to
be addressing how the Holocaust could happen, and why Polish Catholics responded
as they did. Scholars have addressed these questions. Michael C. Steinlauf provides
historical context and psychological insight. Jan Tomasz Gross cites economic
motivations. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz writes about real tensions caused by
high-profile Jewish Communists who did torture and murder Home Army veterans. Edna
Bonacich and Amy Chua advance universally-applicable theories that explain
atrocity as far afield as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Africa – not just
acts committed by Polish Catholics. It behooves any ethical author and
publisher taking on this topic to engage previous scholarship. Steinman and
Beacon Press do not.

Nature abhors a vacuum. In this empty
space where scholarship should be, Steinman reveals her "answer" to
the big questions in a series of anecdotes. For the most part, older, poorer
more rural and more Catholic Poles are "provincial" "Neanderthals"
who hate Jews. Younger, better educated, more sartorially elegant Poles who
have devoted their lives to recreating Poland's lost Jewish culture through tours,
publications and artwork are good Poles.

Steinman and
Beacon Press hand a free pass to the reader. Do you, reader, need to know any
serious facts about Poland before making up your mind about any of these
issues? Nah, not really. Just interpret the dream you had last night.

Breathtaking
in its arrogance and solipsism, "Crooked Mirror" reports that
Steinman and her travel companion Cheryl "imagined convening some grand
international conference" for Jews and Poles. Later she and Cheryl powwow
with "four sincere Polish university students. It was a start." "It
was a start"? There have been numerous international conferences dedicated
to Polish-Jewish relations. Steinman's and Cheryl's chat was not "a start"
at anything.

Steinman appears never to have learned even
conversational Polish – but that's okay; she speaks hot-tub. Steinman
encounters an elderly Polish woman. This woman wears "threadbare" and
"frayed" clothing. Her hands are "stained" with dirt. Her
greenhouse is "rotting." Her lawn furniture is
"overturned." Her blanket is "rumpled." Her hand is a
"claw." This Polish peasant crone is listening to the "infamous
Radio Maryja," an "anti-Semitic station." Steinman concludes
that the old woman is an anti-Semite and "xenophobic."

Those
who know Poland know that Radio Maryja does broadcast anti-Semitic material,
but the station also broadcasts genuinely loving material. I have met deeply good
people who listen to Radio Maryja. Not all its listeners are anti-Semites, any
more than all NPR listeners are effete, brie-eating anti-Zionists. I suspect
that had this old woman been more elegantly dressed – perhaps in garments by
Hugo Boss, the Nazis' couturier – Steinman would not have judged her so
harshly. Indeed Steinman, while writing about Poland but never capturing its
appearance except to describe it in clichéd ways as dreary or grim, never
misses a chance to report who is wearing a leather jacket.

Cheryl
dresses "beguilingly" with "great fashion sense." Cheryl is
an American woman who lives in the South of France and enjoys the beach. She
makes everyone around her indulge her whims to march, unannounced, almost into
strangers' laps at their workplaces, withdraw into pouts, stop a car suddenly,
run down a public road, and scream, or to detail yet another one of her dreams.
Cheryl's carte blanche to be difficult: she inherited grief from her survivor
father.

The reader is to be less indulgent of August
Kowalczyk. Kowalczyk, a Pole, was captured by Nazis at age 19 when attempting
to join the resistance. He was imprisoned in Auschwitz for eighteen months. He
was tortured. Kowalczyk described an SS man casually reading the newspaper, his
pet dog at his feet, during this torture. Kowalczyk escaped. In retribution for
his escape, Nazis gassed three hundred Poles.

The only
thing in Kowalczyk's talk that raised a reaction from his listeners – one was
"stricken" – was his perhaps casual comment that "Jews were
resigned." Listeners to Kowalczyk's talk protested – just that comment.
That was perhaps all they heard of this Polish man's description of his own
crucifixion in Auschwitz. One must question a value system that allows Cheryl
her constant indulgence of her own pain, though she was born in the US and
lives in the South of France, and denies to a man like August Kowalczyk his
heroism and his pain because he is Polish.

Steinman reports
anecdotes as unquestioned fact. Scholarship shows that this is a mistake.
People alter first-person accounts. Anecdotes may or may not be
representational. A responsible storyteller addressing the Holocaust will
compare first-person accounts with accepted scholarship. Steinman's readers
will take these stories as true and representational. That is unfortunate on so
important a topic.

Steinman Orientalizes. Because she does
not speak Polish or Ukrainian, or possess much knowledge of the cultures she
visits, Poles and Ukrainians come across as wacky exotics. They paint murals,
sing songs, love or hate Jews, and kiss hands. Poles exist exclusively as
"Neanderthals" who hate Jews or good goys who love Jews and devote
their lives to them. There are no Poles who live their lives without their
relationship to Jews being their primary feature.

I cannot
imagine Beacon Press publishing such an Orientalizing text about Jews and the
Holocaust. Would they publish a book about a tourist who spent several weeks in
Israel and never bothered to learn conversational Hebrew, or penetrate Israeli
culture? No. Then by what set of rules is this book's paradigm acceptable?
Poles remain objects in this text – things about which Steinman speaks. They do
not speak, or live, for themselves.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

On Monday, March 3, 2014, on Wolf Blitzer's program
"The Situation Room," CNN's Christiane Amanpour defied NYU Professor
Stephen F. Cohen's charge that Ukrainians are anti-Semites who don't deserve
international support in their struggle for democracy.

Cohen alleged that "right-wing nationalists" and
"quasi fascists" were "dictating terms" to a "not
legitimate" "rump parliament" in Ukraine. Evidence of their
"quasi fascist agenda" "They banned the use of Russian as an
official language." "Hatred has been supported by Washington,"
Cohen alleged.

When Blitzer quoted Churkin, Stephen F. Cohen smiled
smugly and crossed his arms across his chest, as if his team had scored a goal against
a hated opponent. Cohen's smug pleasure at seeing Ukrainian pro-democracy
demonstrators demonized as "fascists and anti-Semites" – by a
spokesperson for Russia, as it invaded Ukraine militarily – was telling.

Monday, March 3, 2014

Poles were victimized by Nazis. Source: USHMM
In the Bieganski stereotype, though, Poles ARE Nazis.

The Bieganski stereotype conflates Poland and Nazism. In the
Bieganski stereotype, Poles are the world's worst anti-Semites, and, therefore,
they must be Nazis, and their country must be the home of Nazism.

Bieganski-style conflations of Poland with Nazis and
Nazism are common in contemporary Western culture. One such conflation can be
found in an Amazon review of the 2013 Beacon Press book "The Crooked
Mirror: A Memoir of Polish-Jewish Reconciliation" by Louise Steinman.

The reviewer quoted below is a member of Amazon Vine
Voice, a select group of reviewers whose reviews are promoted by Amazon. Kayla
Rigney further identifies herself as a Holocaust historian. In her review,
Rigney writes,

"Poland's Nazi past IS connected to Poland's own
cultural antisemitism -- and it will always be so connected. Just because small
groups of Polish people are helping to rescue tombstones stolen from Jewish
graves, repair empty synagogues, and are building museums/cultural centers to
honor Poland's Jewish *past*, doesn't mean the entire country has come to terms
with its Nazi past.

It will take many generations to heal the wounds of what
was Jewish Poland, if it is possible to heal them at all. True reconciliation
between hell and the human heart takes *time.* …My heart breaks for Poland,
because *true* reconciliation is *emotionally and spiritually painful* in the
country of Oświęcim. In real life, I'm a Holocaust historian."

So, there you have it. In this Amazon review, we see the
conflation of Poland with Nazism. In fact, of course, Poland has no "Nazi
past." Nazism was a German movement. Bieganski, though, in many minds, is
more powerful than historical reality.

Sunday, March 2, 2014

In recent days, on three different occasions, WABC NY, one of the largest talk radio
stations in the nation, and a division of Cumulus Media, played the Bieganski
card. On the morning of Sunday, March 2, 2014, "Religion on the Line,"
advertised as the longest running show on WABC, featured Rabbi
Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Cooper characterized
Ukrainians as violent, frightening anti-Semites, who had been killing Jews
since the seventeenth century Chmielnicki Massacres. Rabbi Cooper was on the
program in order to re-emphasize points he had made in a Huffington Post
article from February 25, 2014, "Ukraine's
Jews Caught between a Rock and a Hard Place…Again." In that article,
Rabbi Cooper wrote,

"During the Cossack uprising of 1648-57, led by
Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky 15-30,000 Ukrainian Jews out of a total population of
51,000 were murdered or taken captive. The organized violence against the
helpless and impoverished Jews in the Ukraine in the 19th and early 20th
century spawned a new word in the
lexicon of hate -- pogrom. Many of our grandparents fled the Ukraine,
arriving on American shores penniless…During the Russian Revolution and ensuing
Civil War, another estimated 30,000-100,000 Jews were killed…over 1 million
Jews [were] shot by Einsatzgruppen killing squads and Ukrainian collaborators
in Western Ukraine."

In March, 2014, Ukraine is on the brink of catastrophe,
and it needs Western help. At this time of crisis, WABC talk show hosts have
repeatedly characterized Ukrainians as nothing more than brutal, Jew-hating
thugs who deserve no respect. WABC hosts who have hammered home this racist
caricature include Ron
Kuby, Michael Savage, and now "Religion on the Line"'s hosts
Rabbi Joseph Potasnik and Deacon Kevin McCormack, although, to his credit,
Deacon McCormack attempted to soften Rabbi Cooper's line. That attempt was not
successful. Rabbi Cooper had already tarred all Slavs as essentially brutal
pogromists who have been murdering Jews for hundreds of years.

I am reminded of 1981, when the Soviet Union brought its
heel down on Solidarity. At that time, Poland needed international support.
Sadly, many significant Jewish voices in the US insisted that Poland did not
deserve support, because, they argued, Poland was a land of essential, guilty,
anti-Semites. For example, Tikkun's Rabbi Michael Lerner lobbied President Bush
to cut off funding to Poland.

It reminds me of Andrzej Kapiszewski's book
"Conflicts across the Atlantic," which details how some American Jews
made it a point to present as negative an image as possible in the American
press at the time when Poles were struggling to regain their freedom during and
after World War I. Now Ukraine is in crisis, and some American Jews are using
this time to insist to the American public that Ukrainians are essential
anti-Semites who can never change and who do not deserve support or respect.

NO not all Jews are doing this. Some are.

YES horrific crimes were committed against Jews in
Eastern Europe. No decent person has ever denied pogroms or the Holocaust.
Rather, what we reject is the Bieganski stereotype. We must talk to each other
about this in an informed way in order to lay down guidelines for fruitful
conversation. It is not beneficial for one side to monopolize discourse with a
monster stereotype at a time when Eastern Europeans are on the brink.

My Polish friends have been prominent in their support
for Ukraine.

Please note: when Ukrainians did massacre Jews, they also
massacred Polish Catholics.

What people following Ron Kuby and Rabbi Cooper's line
won't tell you is this: the Chmielnicki massacres included significant numbers –
thousands – exact figures are not available –of tortured and murdered Polish
Catholic victims. During World War II, Ukrainians carried out a genocide
against Polish Catholics. There were tens of thousands of victims – no one
knows how many. The Polish Catholic cultural presence in many locations was
erased.

Polish-American poet John Guzlowski is the son of a
survivor of this genocide. As Ukraine struggles today, neither John Guzlowski
nor any of my other Polish friends has said anything like, "The Ukrainians
are killers; remember what they did to us under Chmielnicki in the seventeenth
century; remember what they did to us during World War II."

Rather, we Poles and Polish-Americans are saying,
"Let's focus on supporting democratic elements in Ukraine." We are
not focused on settling old scores, on stereotypes, or on revenge.

I invite concerned persons to unite, organize, and
communicate your concern to WABC and Cumulus.

I have just sent the following email to Deacon Kevin
McCormack,

Dear Deacon McCormack,

I'm writing about your show today. I was very concerned
by Rabbi Cooper's contribution.

I would like to appear on your show in order to offer
another point of view.

I am the author of "Bieganski."
It is the only scholarly book dedicated to stereotypes of Poles and other
Eastern Europeans as brutal anti-Semites. Antony Polonsky, the world expert on
Polish Jewry, was the editor of the series in which the book appeared.

"Bieganski" has been
endorsed by Rabbi Michael Herzbrun, Polish-American poet and professor John
Guzlowski, and Prof. James P. Leary. Father John T. Pawlikowki, chair of the
United States Holocaust Memorial Council's Subcommittee on Church Relations
called "Bieganski" "An important contribution to improved
Polish-Jewish understanding." The Shofar Journal of Jewish Studies called
it "Groundbreaking." American Jewish History said that Bieganski
points out that the Brute Polak stereotype "gives the illusion of
absolving those who failed in their own test of humanity" during the
Holocaust. "Bieganski" won the PAHA Halecki Award. I have been an
invited speaker on this topic at Brandeis, Georgetown, Indiana University
Bloomington, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

I've been listening to "Religion
on the Line" for ten years. I have repeatedly heard Rabbi Potasnik and
other guests deploy the Bieganski stereotype. Deacon McCormack, I know you are
not Eastern European, but as a Catholic you should care about this topic, too.
The Bieganski stereotype is used to distort Christian-Jewish relations and the
Holocaust.

I am sending to you the introduction
to the book as an email attachment. I hope you will have a look.

Dr. Rusty Walker just posted a review of Bieganski on
Amazon. You can see his review here.

I just finished the book, "Bieganski: The Brute
Polak Stereotype in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture (Jews
of Poland)," written by Dr. Danusha Goska. The author investigates the
origin and inaccuracy of the stereotyping of Poles and Poland, and much more.

The book is an excellent read in presenting new
revelations about this complex subject. The author examines the wide-spread
stereotyping of Poles, as well as Poland, Polish Christians and Polish Jews
that will be an expansion on what the reader might presume. It is extremely
well-written and absorbing, while the facts revealed are sometimes horrifying.

The “Interview” chapters include narratives that afford
the reader insights we cannot ignore if we care about inaccurate but accepted
history of Poland, so often infused with biases derived from half-truths, myth
and folklore. The theme, the Bieganski - the image of Pole as brute – is
readily proven inaccurate and the origin of the label is explained. Dr. Goska,
in her gifted writing style, and scholarly citing of sources, proves uncomfortable
realities about both the Jews and the Polish before and after WWII in Poland
that most writers have not had the courage to divulge. She, at once, concedes
anti-Semitism of some Poles in Poland, while reminding us of many more heroic
Poles who saved Jews. We are reminded that Poles were also sent to the ovens of
Auschwitz, a fact that is resisted by many who wish to retain certain
stereotypes.

Dr. Goska’s accounts of elite Poles antithetic to peasant
Poles, and Israeli Jews mocking Holocaust survivors are shocking to read, but
reveal her determination to root out the truth. Jews reached out to the Allies
prior to the “Final Solution” and during it, to Israel, American Jews and the
Jewish Councils who we find disbelieved it and eventually ignored it. Many knew,
but separate themselves from Jews destined for extermination as this horrific
event unfolded unimpeded. Indeed, we learn that FDR and the American government
are not blameless in allowing the Holocaust. This is but a glimpse of what is
difficult to acknowledge with regards to shared blame.

The book was not written to place blame. I find that it
is more to acknowledge the unforeseen consequences of silence and inaction, and
dangers of relying on myth and perceptions instead of insisting on factual accounts.

I recommend this book as one of the few that allows us to
discover truthful pre-WWII and Post-WWII Polish, German, and Russian
interaction and the resultant legacy. It is no wonder the book is controversial
among Jews and Poles, but also Americans, including publishers. Non-biased
truth is often hard to read, let alone accept.

There are the accounts of scapegoating, the need for
shared victimization, dropped responsibilities among U.S government leaders,
Americans, American Jews all of whom were aware of the Holocaust.

Both Jews and Poles are proven to be victims of the Nazis
at Auschwitz, but we find through Dr. Goska’s research that this presented a
diluting effect necessary for sustained victimhood resulting in the suppressing
of the role of Poles in assisting Jews.

In light of copious adversarial revelations I have
touched on above, it is heartwarming that the book ends well. There is a
touching story where the reader surely agrees that, nevertheless, there remains
an "ineluctable bond between Poles and Jews."